I'm Political Economy editor at Forbes, editor of RealClearMarkets.com, plus a senior economic advisor to Toreador Research & Trading. I have book on how the economy works, Popular Economics: What LeBron James, the Rolling Stones and Downton Abbey Can Teach You About Economics that is set for release in April of 2015. I have a weekly column on Mondays at Forbes.com.

Sorry Left AND Right, No Job Requires A College Degree

Recently this writer participated as part of a television panel in which it was asked if there aren’t enough jobs that require a college degree for the coming glut of college grads. The question was a funny one, one that conferred on college grads skills much greater than those possessed by the average individual. Maybe, but not asked enough is what job requires a college degree? The truth is no job does, though politicians and policy analysts would have us believe otherwise.

President Obama regularly talks up the need for more math classes “to equip our children for the future.” The latter is odd and a bit dated, particularly when we consider that computers and calculators have largely made the need for math knowledge something of the past.

In Obama’s defense, he’s not alone when it comes to educational political correctness, and the need to get education right so that “our children” are prepared for a very challenging, and very globalized job market. Right of center thinkers are similarly deluded with utopian visions 0f universities “equipping” students with the knowledge needed to succeed in the real world after four largely wasted (literally and figuratively) years on campus.

The latest example of the above is Jane Shaw, president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in North Carolina. Writing in theWall Street Journal, Shaw argued that “Elite universities, such as the University of North Carolina, are doing a disservice when they lead students into majors with few, if any, job prospects.” Shaw went on to write that “Many liberal-arts graduates, even from the best schools, aren’t getting jobs in part because they didn’t learn much in school.”

What’s funny about this is that Obama is President of the United States and Shaw President of a prestigious think tank, but could either with a straight face point to anything learned in college that has any relevance to their present work? This writer highly doubts it.

The above in mind, for college students majoring in liberal arts, along with parents paying for them to major in a discipline “with few, if any, job prospects,” the answer is to relax. Once again no job, and this is especially true for undergraduate students, requires a college degree.

Whether the ambition is to become an investment banker or a Starbucks barista, the dirty little secret is that nothing learned during the four (or five) fun-filled years on idyllic campuses has anything to do with either form of employment. That four years of English Lit or finance courses wouldn’t be required to work behind the counter at Grumpy’s is obvious, but it’s also the case that what’s learned in those finance classes is not necessary if your desire is to thrive at Goldman Sachs.

To believe otherwise is to believe that someone (the college professor) who for the most part lacks any background in the real-world application of finance could transfer skills to those who desire that real-world knowledge. Lots of luck there. If Wall Street is your goal, major in whatever interests you. Ultimately the top financial firms are looking for “good athletes”; as in people who are smart and who work hard. Anything you need to know you’ll learn on the job.

If this is doubted, one need only spend some time with first year analyst classes at Goldman. What would quickly be discovered is that prominently mixed in with the finance majors are countless liberal arts grads. Lots of reformed lawyers too. Indeed, CEO Lloyd Blankfein has a law degree as opposed to an MBA, and it’s also the case that he rose through the ranks at GS at least initially as a gold salesman. It’s not a stretch to proclaim that Blankfein didn’t take classes on gold or sales while earning his Harvard Law degree.

Billionaire David Rubenstein is similarly a lawyer by training, but his billions presumably do not result from time spent learning Con Law. It’s said that Rubenstein’s greatest skill is as a fundraiser for The Carlyle Group’s myriad investment funds. Can someone please tell me which college class taught him how to do the latter?

Shaw feels students need more rigorous majors to prepare them for the job market, but the late college dropout Steve Jobs pointed to a calligraphy class that he audited as one of his major commercial inspirations. National Review Online’s Katrina Trinko points out that the late Norio Ohga (past president of Sony) “was an opera singer before joining Sony full-time.” Billionaire David Geffen lied about having graduated from UCLA so that he could become an agent, and then proceeded to revolutionize music. Do Shaw and Obama think he’d have more billions if he’d taken agenting or “business of music” (they’re offered – amazingly) classes in Westwood? Michael Bloomberg was fired from his investment banking job at Salomon Brothers, then proceeded to make his billions with an eponymous information services company. Would anyone care to tell this writer what classes prepared him to totally reshape how we acquire information on the way to becoming one of the world’s richest men?

As fun as time spent in college is (this writer highly recommends it), it’s pure fantasy to assume that knowledge gained on campus translates to a hyper-dynamic business world. In truth, be it history, finance, engineering, English, or even pre-Med, anything taught is almost by definition yesterday’s news. Entrepreneurialism speaks to disruption and the overturning of the existing commercial order. Despite this, there are actually college classes that presume to teach students how to be entrepreneurs. Note to college students: sleep through those classes.

Politicians love to talk up the need for more engineers, but then lost on the political class is that the Soviet Union had literally ten times the number of engineers that the U.S. did in the ‘70s. That it did in no way staved off the country’s eventual economic collapse.

Thinking of engineers here, and the clamoring for more engineering degrees, anyone teaching the discipline would as a rule be imparting knowledge of no practical use. Sorry, but the latter is just basic economics. If the professor had knowledge of future engineering applications, the same professor would be making billions in the private sector. Engineers aren’t valuable for what they’ve learned; instead they’re sometimes valuable because they’ve completed a major that’s usually a lot more difficult than is, for instance, the political science major. An engineering degree signals that you’re smart, and probably hard working, but the major itself doesn’t make you smart.

A college diploma is simply a credential that at best says you’re smart and ambitious. Employers aren’t interested in that senior thesis you completed at Yale on socialist overtones in Greek mythology, rather they’re interested that you were smart enough to get into Yale in the first place.

In short, we don’t have too many college grads at the moment as much as our economy is moving too slowly (largely thanks to economists and politicians who listened way too closely as their university professors imparted Keynesian “wisdom” to them) to employ the many Americans who want to work. Analysts like Shaw would seemingly argue that college has underprepared today’s graduates, but the happier truth is that college can’t prepare us for anything.

Indeed, college doesn’t make you smart or hard working as much as smart and hard working people often go to college. Being smart is a function of curiosity that decidedly cannot be taught. Hard work similarly lends itself to achievement in the working world, but there are no classes that teach it. If they do exist, they’re a waste of time.

If students soon to graduate are worried that they’re lazy, the answer to this is simple: migrate toward a field of employment that you’re passionate about. If so, you’ll never be lazy again and you’ll be very successful; the whole time using skills and knowledge that were decidedly not picked up on campus.

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This article was absolutely amazing! If you care to read an article full of real ignorance read this “http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/college-degree-required-by-increasing-number-of-companies.html?smid=fb-share”

“I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now,” said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm’s receptionist…“I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I’m not really thinking about it right now,” she said. “You know, this is a really great place to work.”

For undergraduate without direction I think this article is very true. However if you have your heart set on being a physician then what you do in the first 4 years of school most definitely can help when taking the MCATs and serve as a foundation for medical school. I am sure this is true of other very focused career paths. But I agree and can relate to the author’s point of view for the most part. I did learn some skills in college I still use today; however my real training started during internships, followed by the numerous jobs I held until I found a career I excel at.

Your comments are well taken, however not practical. Medical schools require applicants to take prerequisite classes in undergraduate college regardless of MCAT score and the law requires an individual have a medical license to practice medicine, which cannot be obtained without going to medical school. So regardless of whether a MCAT can be taken without going to college, and whether a person could ace one without formal training means nothing in our society…absolutely nothing.

I know a lot of super intelligent people without discipline and they are not cut out for a lot of careers. People like Steve Jobs (without a degree) are the exception, not the norm. And he wasn’t the poster boy for sanity or discipline. He changed the world we live in and I find him very intriguing. However, I highly doubt he would have been able to endure the rigorous demands of other careers (for example, a neurosurgeon) because of his completely unstable and unconventional behavior – and his drug use would not have been tolerated. However his genius ideas and near unattainable goals were able to be carried through by the more disciplined technical people he hired and he succeeded in his unconventional way.

As for some comments about the negative comments being because people are defensive because they are college educated…I am far defensive…I barely made it through college because I lacked interest and now am a successful business owner. I’m the opposite, I know many opportunities are not an option to me due to my lack of education – I only have a BA. It is the world we live in and I accept it since it is not going to change in our lifetime.

Wow, your statement pissed me off so much that I signed up for a Forbes account. Anyway the point I want to make is that before medical schools and the years of training it takes to be a physician, guess what happened to people who were seriously ill? THEY DIED. If you want to see what happens when there are “doctors” but not medical school, look at Africa: in some places here are healers who treat starving toddlers by ripping out their teeth.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. – Calvin Coolidge

Looks like you’re taking a lot of flack for this. I don’t know these commenters, but I’ve no doubt some of the fangs stem from defensiveness.

I never bothered to go to college, and I’m doing well with my career path (software development). The cost of my education was a willingness to invest the time to learn how to do what I need to do and the cost of any books that provided answers I couldn’t find online.

So I’m doubly ahead as I’m making good money and enjoying my career path as well as having no student loans to pay off.